I'm going to be moving up to Anchorage, AK in July or so - my girlfriend is starting a job at the university there, and we're taking the big plunge and moving up north.

Any Spiceheads have any thoughts on job opportunities in the area? I've been senior helpdesk/junior sysadmin at my current position at a district courthouse for about six years now, running all the Windows servers (about ten systems serving ~ 200 people) and answerable for a wide range of technology, including deploying an open-source WiFi solution, setting up a VPN, writing some audio conversion software to move away from proprietary file formats for court recordings... generally anything that was necessary. I'm pretty adaptable and would be looking for something comparable to what I'm doing now - I like being a generalist with a wide variety of different projects.

I'm looking at the normal job boards and state sites, but thought I'd check and see if any Spiceheads have any connections up there - never hurts to check.

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If you can get on with the state, I totally recommend it- the benefits are well worth it. you might check into companies like tekmate/alaskacommunications, and put in a resume at futaris if possible. I can't guarantee that anything will come of it, but at least it's something.

You may wind up looking at MTA or the power providers (chugach, ml&p, etc) as well as city hall. Unfortunately, a lot of anchorage is who and not always what you know. You are moving into the biggest small town I've ever seen. At some point, in someway... literally everyone knows everyone.

Yeah, my understanding was that the days and nights were screwy in length, but it's far enough south that you don't have the massive day/night cycles that you do in, say, Fairbanks.

Ideally I'd like to get on at a government job, since that might provide some way to transfer my existing government retirement stuff over - some places will do that. I doubt I'll be going up for slope work outside of Anchorage; not a lot of reason to do that when I've got a good job where I'm at. If I wasn't moving to keep the family together, I wouldn't bother moving at all.

Sadly, NW3JL, I haven't gutted a fish since I was about eight or nine, so I don't think that's a skill I can put on my resume.

I added Anchorage as a location on my weather apps a couple of months ago, when she first started looking into going there. It's regularly been colder here in Kansas than it was there, though it's much snowier up there (obviously). I like the winter a lot more than the intolerably hot summers here, so I'm not too afraid of the climate.

The winters can be brutally cold, but they also tend to be incredibly dry- the cold literally drops the moisture out of the air. My single biggest complaint about anchorage revolves around the snow and the fact that even the locals can't seem to drive for squat when there's more than a few flakes on the ground (there's always a ton of flakes on the road, they just tend to be IN the cars...)

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